American Oligarchs Quotes

“The losers, according to the Times: “People Buying Health Insurance,” “Individual Taxpayers in the Future,” “The Elderly,” “Low-Income Families,” and people in high-income, highly taxed states like California and New York. “In the long run, most Americans will see no tax cut or a tax hike,” the Washington Post wrote in its own analysis.38 The final loser was the US Treasury, and government itself: by the end of the fiscal year in which the bill went into effect, the deficit had grown to $779 billion.39”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“That stack of folders beckoned the world’s corrupt leaders and oligarchs to do what developer Donald Trump would have tried to do in their position, to use money to influence government decision-making. And the public would never know if his decisions were made to benefit his country or his bottom line.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“I think Politico called this a ‘half-blind’ trust, but it’s not even halfway blind,” Shaub said in his speech. “The only thing it has in common with a blind trust is the label, ‘trust.’ His sons are still running the business and of course he knows what he owns.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“The Emoluments Clause states: “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” This was a profoundly American idea, Teachout had written. “It showed a real split from the old European corrupt ways. The new Americans were insistent on this clause even though it caused some problems with diplomacy because there had been a lot of financial interchange between diplomats before. I had used it as an example of the American commitment to anti-corruption. I had never expected there would be a president who would blatantly violate it.” Corrupt governments and oligarchs had plenty of experience with Trump’s new corporate structure: you turn over a company to your children to wink at the world that”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“In September, there was more outreach, Ivanka said, from a Schneiderman advisor, who “said that Mr. Schneiderman would ‘greatly appreciate’ if I attended a fundraising event for newly elected California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris as Mr. Schneiderman’s guest. He also asked that we make a substantial contribution to Ms. Harris’s re-election campaign.” Ivanka’s father, Donald Trump, wrote a five-thousand-dollar check to Harris’s campaign, but Ivanka attended the fundraiser, “an intimate gathering of New York”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“I don’t think that hope is just a feeling state. I think that hope is a choice that you make. It’s not a choice to deny reality, but it’s a choice to use your intelligence to examine the world in front of you and the obstacles to progress and to try to identify places from whence progress can reasonably be anticipated and to try to put your efforts into making those—I mean that, to me, is what hope is, it’s an activity, it’s an action in the world. Just as I think despair is, I think that both take effort. And I remain optimistic, I think there is still work to do.”14”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“In 1967, Arendt wrote an essay for the New Yorker called “Truth and Politics” that articulated where such mendacity could lead. “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“Gessen described mafia states as, previously, existing in the wake of totalitarian regimes, but suggested Trump might “introduce the world to the post-democratic mafia state. In this model, he will still be the patriarch who distributes money and power. The patriarch’s immediate circle will comprise his actual family and a few favorites. . . . They will concern themselves with issues of interest to the president, and with enrichment of themselves and their allies. The outer circle will be handed issues in which Trump is less interested. In practical terms, this will mean that the establishment Republicans in the cabinet will be able to pursue a radically conservative program on many areas of policy, without regard to views Trump may or may not hold, and this will keep the Republican Party satisfied with a president it once didn’t want.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“Whereas other firms had operated in specialized niches—lobbying, consulting, public relations—Black, Manafort and Stone bundled all those services under one roof, a deceptively simple move that would eventually help transform Washington.”17 They worked for politicians during the campaign season, performing their political strategists’ magic. In the off-season, they worked for business clients who paid them to call the very politicians they’d helped elect.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“the students and the teachers were acutely status-conscious, strivers. It was understood that at a school like Frisch, only a few students would get into each Ivy League school, only one or two would get into Harvard.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“On October 26, 2016—less than two weeks to election day—travel writer Zach Everson covered the ribbon cutting at the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC, just a few blocks from the White House. Everson frequently covered hotel openings, which often featured lavish food spreads and “the owners sipping champagne with a few travel writers.” But this one was different. A horde of political reporters trailed Donald and Ivanka Trump as they toured the hotel. “The political reporters were amazed they had complimentary pastries,” Everson said in an interview. 1 A couple months later, Everson got an assignment from Condé Nast Traveller to cover the growing political and social scene at the hotel. In the course of researching that story, Everson booked a night at the hotel. One of his fellow guests told Everson he was about to leave for a restaurant outside the hotel, when he noticed workers polishing the banisters and the manager nervously pacing. The guest concluded, correctly, that the president was on his way, cancelled his outside reservation, and ate at the hotel instead. To track presidential comings and goings for his story, Everson started monitoring social media feeds. And he noticed something: not even a year into Trump’s presidency, the hotel had become a unique locale in Washington. “It became like Melville’s white whale,” Everson said. “If you want it to be your opportunity and a place for you to go and rub elbows with the President, it’s that. If you’re a lobbyist or a businessman or a foreign leader and want to portray you are close to the president, it’s that too. It’s everything you hate or love about Donald Trump.” Everson quit travel writing to cover, full time, the Trump International Hotel. He began publishing a newsletter, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. He had plenty of material.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power